Shoplifters
by W.D. Jones
Summary: Santana is caught shoplifting, but she can get off free...for a price. One-Shot.


"You there, hey you, stop right there!"

The girl striding away from the store stopped dead in her hurried tracks. She swore under her breath and turned around to face her pursuer.

"Don't think I didn't see that! Put those back or I will have to call the police." A short plump woman of medium age was walking towards her. A name tag dangled from her chest, 'Assistant Manager: Tweety ', her face was more red than yellow.

"You shoplifters need to either up your standards or just give up; I'm getting really sick of this." The woman grabbed her by the arm and hauled her off down the back hallway of the store.

"You will hand those garments over to me and explain this to the manager, IN DETAIL." The young shoplifter forked over the pair of jeans to Tweety and stepped through a door to the left. The dark-haired girl sheepishly closed the door behind her.

"Another delinquent, eh?" a gruff voice came from a deep corner of the office. Her head turned towards the voice. A tall blonde haired man sat behind a large desk, his feet settled on top of the monthly bills. Her eyes were drawn to the other end of the room. A very impressive array of computer and TV screens were covered in security footage, one of them focused in on the exact rack she had taken the jeans off of.

"Perhaps," she replied, trying to keep cool.

"Look I don't want to do this but I will have to call the police." He threatened, removing his feet from the desk and reaching for the receiver.

"If you don't want to then don't,"

"Not that easy, I can't just let you go or you won't learn anything and the police will eventually find out. Then it's downhill for both of us from there. His hand wrapped around the receiver and brought it to his ear.

"Please" the girl said, starting to play the innocent card, "My sister, she needs it…and we can afford a new pair. Soon she won't have anything to wear." She didn't even have a sister, whatever he didn't need to know that. The man set down the phone and looked straight into the girls deep brown eyes.

"Well I do have one thing that could punish you and give you a bit of money to spare, if you do a nice job" he suggested. Her eyes lit up "My son has his 18 birthday party tomorrow and we are short on caterers, if you volunteer we'll forget this and you can keep any tips you receive."

"Deal, where should I show up tomorrow?" this was even better that she had hoped.

"The party will be at 8:00 at Breadsticks, I will be there to keep a very close eye on you."

"I'll be there, don't worry" she turned to step out the door, he stopped her,

"Wait you never told me your name," he asked

"Lopez, Santana Lopez"

Crap, what had she gotten herself into. She wasn't really looking forward to this as she walked up the fight of steps to the employee entrance. What if someone recognized her? Santana Lopez was not usually found waiting on tables, she was usually found be waited on. The door squeaked as she walked through and looked around the kitchen. People were all running franticly about trying to get things ready. She walked up to one of them and tapped them on the shoulder. They whipped around and almost dumped their plate of sandwich rolls on the floor.

"Watch it," she said, "you might drop those on somebody. Hey you don't happen to know where the owner is do you? I'm supposed to help"

The girl she had knocked over looked up; her eyes were a magnificent shade of sky blue. Santana went speechless for a second.

"Um yeah just put on one of those shirts over there and pick up a tray." Her voice was soft and sweet. Santana hoped she hadn't scared the girl.

"Thanks"

Five minutes later she had thrown on one of the gross catering shirts. They smelled vaguely of sweat and salami, it was extremely itchy and a dingy shade of red. Gross she thought, well at least it's only for an hour or so. She strode out of the bathroom and straight into the girl from earlier, knocking her to the ground.

"I'm so sorry," she said reaching down to lift the girl off the ground, "I need to watch where I'm going," The blonde girl straightened herself and brushed off her skinny jeans.

"No it's okay; I should have known something like that would happen. I came looking for you, just wanted to check to see if you were okay and that you hadn't been scared away by the smell of these shirts." She chuckled. Santana couldn't help but smile, this girl was cute and funny

"My names Santana, who are you?" she asked trying not to sound intrusive.

"Brittany, I just started working here about a month ago, this is obviously your first day on the job" they started walking down the hall and picked up a tray of sandwiches each,

"No, I'm just here for the night…Volunteer hours." Santana thought she saw a twinge of sadness in the girl's eyes, sweet. Her cheeks were red and she was staring at the ground. "But if I like it I might consider taking a job here."

"Really? It's not a very good paying job." Her eyes lit up and she looked at Santana. "But the boss is nice and so are the employees." She gave a slight wink towards the brunette. She whipped a pad of paper and a pencil out of her pocket and scribbled something on it. "My number, call me."

Santana took the paper and smiled as the girl skipped off to serve some nearby strangers. She would definitely consider taking a job here.


End file.
